Chapter Twenty-Three
In which everything goes straight to hell.
Sloan…
I’ve been running for far too long not to know when something terrible is about to happen, and when Ethan not-quite shoves his minion through the door to my room, I know trouble is close. The kind of trouble that probably includes a lot of bullets.
“Sloan, this is Patrick. He’ll be keepin’ an eye on ya for a moment.” He turns to Patrick, lowering his voice, “No one gets in this room.”
His minion or lieutenant or whatever you call an employee in the mafia world nods gravely. I can tell by his tense posture that he would much rather be shooting than babysitting, but he locks the door behind Ethan, who leaves without a second look back.
“Ma’am,” Patrick intones, “is there anything I can get ya? Water? Ice?”
My brow furrows. This dude sounds like the head waiter at a five-star restaurant. “Um, I’m fine, thank you.” My voice has improved from a pathetic croak to sounding more like a three pack a day smoker. “What’s going on?”
This guy looks like he’s former military, his dark hair cropped short and muscles for miles. Old Sloan would have thought he was wildly hot. New Sloan is eyeing how he’s standing between me and the door. Like I’m going to be able to wrestle this behemoth and sprint my way to freedom.
“Nothing, ma’am,” he says, his gaze moving around the room, categorizing windows and doors for potential threats.
“Uh-huh…” I watch him stalk through the room, looking out the window and craning his head to look up, like he’s searching for something in the sky. “So, Patrick. I’m sure you’d tell me if something was wrong, of course.”
He doesn’t even bother to lie to me!
“No ma’am I would not tell you. I will tell you that you are safe.”
An explosion rocks the rooftop above us and I yelp as a long, jagged crack appears in the ceiling by the window. “Th- this seems like a good time for you to be honest and transparent with me.”
Patrick pulls out his gun, holding it up with two hands. “Ma’am I’m going to move ya to the bathroom, it’s the most structurally sound area.” Helping me out of bed with his gun in one hand and the other around my waist, he hoists me up like a recalcitrant toddler, speed-walking me and my IV stand to the bathroom and lifts me into the huge clawfoot tub, a heavy old iron and porcelain one. I’d been eyeing this tub earlier, even though I was in no shape to use it. He races back out and returns with a couple of pillows and all the blankets, piling them on me.
“My oxygen tank,” I spit a feather out of my mouth from the down comforter he threw on my face.
His eyes light up and he nods. “Aye, stay put.”
“It’s not like I can go anywhere,” I mumble. The reality is crashing down on me that the fracture in the ceiling and me huddling here in the tub probably means we’re fucked. Who sets off an explosion big enough to crack a reinforced ceiling like an egg?
I smother a scream as another blast rocks the bathroom. Through the door, I can see the huge picture window in the bedroom, a jagged crack racing through the middle of it, astonishingly thick chunks of glass falling away. Oh, god. What’s big enough to crack bulletproof glass like that?
Patrick races back in, setting the oxygen tank next to him as he settles into a little alcove where he’s hidden from the bedroom door. He can still survey the room and what’s left of the window from there.
“Patrick…” I can dimly hear gunfire from above us, now that there are giant massive fucking holes in the bulletproof window. “How many bullets do you have?”
“Enough, Miss Masters.” He doesn’t take his eyes off the bedroom door. “I have enough.”
“S- so I was thinking,” I say, huddled in the tub. “You ever been scuba diving?”
His mouth curls just slightly. “Yes ma’am, when I was in the service.”
I knew it!
“Okay… okay. So, if we run out of bullets or they charge the door, you could just-” I break off in a fit of coughing that is in no way soothing for my ribs.
“Ma’am, ya don’t have to talk,” he urges, looking at me in concern, but he doesn’t leave his spot.
“You could just aim the oxygen tank, crack the seal on top and we’ve got ourselves a missile…” I barely get through the sentence before coughing weakly and ruining any badass cred I might have been building with Patrick.
“Aye, I do know how to make that happen,” he says gravely, given the circumstances. I can still see a bit of a smile hovering around the edges of his lips.
Great. I’m amusing him.
Another blast rocks the bathroom and I scream like a coward, like a crybaby.
“Listen carefully,” he says, “men are about to come through that broken window. I will shoot until I’m out of bullets. But if it looks like they’re gonna throw an explosive, like a grenade, I will shout and ya will sink down as low as ya can and cover yourself completely. This is a good, heavy-weight iron tub. It can repel a hell of a lot of shrapnel. I’ll be using the tank on them first, if I can.”
“Okay, but you be ready to jump in here with me, right?” It’s going to hurt so much to have this enormous Scotsman land on me but he can’t stay out there.
“Aye, ma’am.”
Liar. He’d rather stand there and get blown up than get in the tub with his boss’s prisoner. My fever’s peaking again because why not have an overheated, sweaty body when you’re about to die?
Oh, god. I don’t want to die. I want to see Nate again… My skin may be blazing but the sweat on my face and running down my back is cold, and I start shivering under my pile of blankets. I’m so useless right now and I want to scream. I should be helping defend us, instead I’m huddled in this tub and I can’t make myself move.
Where is Ethan? I’m sure he’s on the roof, likely firing off an AK-47 in each fist.
What if he’s dead?
I hate his guts.
He kidnapped me.
He saved my life.
And he’s all I have.
Another explosion hits hard enough to drop some of the heavy marble tiles in the shower, shattering on the floor. Patrick has the oxygen tank wedged between his feet, his gun up and when the first man crashes through what’s left of the window, he shoots him in the head.
“Get ready to slide down and cover your head,” Patrick shouts over his shoulder, still firing. His bullet hits the next bad guy in the chest; the man stumbles back, but still raises his gun.
“He’s got a bulletproof vest! He’s not down” I screech. Patrick nods, shoots the man he’s aiming at, and then swings back to the bulletproof vest guy.
The tub shakes and skids back a bit on its claw feet. Is it another explosion? My knee brushes against something sharp and I realize bulletproof vest guy’s bullet hit the tub, making the inside bulge a bit, sending shards of porcelain loose.
My ears are ringing from the gunfire and the smoke is making me gasp and cough. I put a blanket over my face, trying to smother the noise. Patrick can’t look back at me, he needs to concentrate.
Jesus Christ, how many men are there? Three men are dead on the floor, two more are rappelling through the shattered window and I can’t seem to process it. They just keep coming and coming and…
Another bullet hits the carved wood frame by Patrick’s head and I try to hold back a scream/cough. He releases the empty clip from his gun and jams in a new one.
“Enough bullets,” I whisper, rocking back and forth, half insane, “he says we have enough.”
The thing that ends this nightmare of guns, smoke and screaming is the oxygen tank and the luckiest shot ever.
Patrick kicks the tank, spinning it so the cap that seals it is facing me. There’s a low grunt of pain and blood spurts from his side. He staggers backward, tightening his finger on the trigger and the shot goes wild, hitting the top of the tank at an angle and ripping off the seal. The force propels the tank out of the bathroom door as it becomes a missile, tearing through one guy's shoulder and nearly decapitating the next before soaring through the window and knocking the two men about to enter back out, their ropes swaying, smashing their now unconscious bodies against the brick, over and over.
Time slows down and speeds up so I don’t know when Ethan enters the bathroom, only that he’s hovering over me, covered in blood and his left hand still gripping an enormous knife. “Darlin’ you’re okay. You’re safe.” He kneels down and his gore-covered face is right next to mine. I can make out the tracks of blood running down his skin.
“Is that your blood?”
“Maybe 20%,” he says with a little deranged smile.
“Oh. Okay.” Then my poor fevered body decides it’s time to lose consciousness.